and desolate the
hitherto safe and peaceful dwellings of the American people, was an
apprehension not so entirely unsupported by appearances, as to be
pronounced chimerical. With a blind infatuation, which treated reason
as a criminal, immense numbers applauded a furious despotism,
trampling on every right, and sporting with life, as the essence of
liberty; and the few who conceived freedom to be a plant which did not
flourish the better for being nourished with human blood, and who
ventured to disapprove the ravages of the guillotine, were execrated
as the tools of the coalesced despots, and as persons who, to weaken
the affection of America for France, became the calumniators of that
republic. Already had an imitative spirit, captivated with the
splendour, but copying the errors of a great nation, reared up in
every part of the continent self created corresponding societies, who,
claiming to be the people, assumed a control over the government, and
were loosening its bands. Already were the mountain,[17] and a
revolutionary tribunal, favourite toasts; and already were principles
familiarly proclaimed which, in France, had been the precursors of
that tremendous and savage despotism, which, in the name of the
people, and by the instrumentality of affiliated societies, had spread
its terrific sway over that fine country, and had threatened to
extirpate all that was wise and virtuous. That a great majority of
those statesmen who conducted the opposition would deprecate such a
result, furnished no security against it. When the physical force of a
nation usurps the place of its wisdom, those who have produced such a
state of things no longer control it.

[Footnote 17: A well known term designating the most violent
party in France.]

These apprehensions, whether well or ill founded, produced in those
who felt them, an increased solicitude for the preservation of peace.
Their aid was not requisite to confirm the judgment of the President
on this interesting subject. Fixed in his purpose of maintaining the
neutrality of the United States, until the aggressions of a foreign
power should clearly render neutrality incompatible with honour; and
conceiving, from the last advices received from England, that the
differences between the two nations had not yet attained that point,
he determined to make one decisive effort, which should either remove
the ostensible causes of quarrel, or demonstrate the indisposition of
Gr